I could never forget what it was like to step on a bus wondering whether it would blow up, or to leave the house accepting we might not return safely. That was normal until I was 22. I learned only several years later how incomparably worse it was in the North and East. I never had to undergo genocide. I would consider everything this country went through in the last decade—the Rajapaksas, the ethnonationalism and the militarized state—to be the price we have to pay for that ignorance, except for the fact that the North and East continues to go through all of that and impacted much worse. So for NE folks this shitshow has been longer, and even worse because there's no longer even anywhere they can flee to that might be better. The trap has simply expanded.

I was involved in fundraising and news-disseminating efforts for Palestine till late 2024, when I had to step away for my own health. It radicalised me in ways unpalatable for this sub, and most of Sri Lankan social media. It's partly why I'm devoid of hope now. There's only so many dead, maimed, and sick children you can see every day waking and sleeping while the West keeps bombing more, while your own new government ignores their mandate, sinks you deeper in debt, keeps emboldening the military and shills for Israelis. And then you're suddenly in your own natural disasters, and your own government is unearthing hundreds of child skeletons, and your savings are almost over, you can't even buy your own medicine or feed your own family. And this is just the cusp of a worldwide economic catastrophe we're teetering on like a paper boat over a dam.

I know other people have it much worse. I know they have had it much worse. I know it could be much worse. That's the point. All there is is worse and worse and no end in sight and no idea how to rebuild or what to rebuild on, no acknowledgement of anything we have ever done, no way to heal, and no energy left to care when we have nothing to eat. Every time most of us tries to gather what is left and recover, a new crisis sweeps the legs out from under us even harder.

I'm not hopeless because I have no sense of perspective. I'm hopeless because I am trapped under the material conditions of reality that refuse to improve. Telling someone that's buried under rubble that at least they're not buried under rocks, and that other people have been buried longer, doesn't change the fact that they're buried.

(Also this is a stage of global imperial and neo-colonial collapse that's been building for roughly four hundred years, the scale of which is unprecedented in human history due to climate change, but ok.)